Mike Johnson Is Becoming the New Liberal Bogeyman

Speaker Mike Johnson (right) and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole in the U.S. Capitol on October 8, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

It’s been nearly two years since Mike Johnson left the wings of the national political stage, where he had been hanging out with his fellow congressional bit players, and moved into the spotlight, with a star turn presiding over the lower chamber of Congress. As his profile has grown, he has also taken on a secondary role—as one of Washington’s great political bogeymen.

His prominent position notwithstanding, Johnson has remained a relative unknown among swaths of the public since he became speaker. In a February Pew Research Center poll of American adults, 35 percent of respondents said they did not know him. In the same poll conducted in September, 36 percent of respondents had not heard of Johnson. (Even fewer respondents know Johnson’s Senate counterpart, majority leader John Thune [R-S.D.]; 56 percent of respondents in the September survey have never heard of him.)

But those who are aware of Johnson are inclined to dislike him: About 60 percent of the respondents in the September Pew survey who said they knew him (roughly 38 percent of overall respondents) see him unfavorably. This disapproval is likely to go up as the shutdown continues, as Johnson is both making himself the GOP’s face during the government blackout and adamantly refusing to budge or negotiate with Democrats to reopen the government, even though a majority of voters blame his party for the stoppage.

And as Democrats have developed their lines of attack during the shutdown fight, Johnson has become one of their primary targets.